Suicide: "Mother, May I?" (Inclusive Fitness, Maternal Investment, and Regression to the Mean)

Poster presentation, ISHE, Detroit, 2006

Suicide, like murder, occurs in patterns that suggest a psychological adaptation that might be an expression of inclusive fitness. "Female choice" operates most clearly when partnerships form, after conception and before mating, the outcomes of genomic contests influenced both times by resource availability. Maternal investment may apply not only to prenatal scrimping and abortions but also to the suicides that occur 60 years postpartum. On the other hand, data exist that do not fit with an inclusive fitness model. Consistent with Fisher's fundamental theorem, both suicide and inclusive fitness may be two ways that natural selection achieves a regression to the mean.